Post-Hysterics: Zadie Smith and the Fiction of Austerity

Marcus, David

doi:10.1353/dss.2013.0035

Cited by 13 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…They are continually pulled back to NW, to Willesden; although at times the novel ventures into other parts of the city, Marcus rightly points out that "like a released top, Smith's narrative spins out in ever-widening circles but never drifts too far from its geographic center." 22 Drifting too far from the geographic center seems, in fact, punishable. Felix Cooper goes to central London, where the tourists are, only to find his demise on the way back home.…”

Section: Smith Confronts Postcolonial Melancholia and Suggests A Path To Conviviality Throughmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Forster and Gilroy: Race and (Re)connection in Zadie Smith's NW

Amelsvoort¹

2018

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

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This article interprets Zadie Smith's novel NW (2012) as an attempt to connect E. M. Forster's famous dictum "only connect" with Paul Gilroy's concept of "conviviality." NW's representation of two friends who are constituted by boundaries instilled by class, race and ethnicity, but who also contest those limits, points to the difficulties faced by many contemporary European minorities. In NW, the idea of race collaborates with that of ethnicity and class to form a strongly racialized logic through which the immigrant's upward mobility is subtly yet decisively affected. NW suggests that Gilroy's convivial society is only possible with Forsterian, interpersonal connections. Only after Leah and Natalie, the novel's central characters, rekindle their friendship, can they set in motion the novel's closing act of justice. Zadie Smith's fourth novel, NW (2012), closes with an act of justice. Leah Hanwell and Natalie Blake, who had been friends in high school in the London neighborhood of Willesden, suspect that a former classmate of theirs committed a murder and contact the police. First, they send in an anonymous tip but, finding the experience "anticlimactic," decide to make a call instead. 1 Leah and Natalie, who had become alienated during college and subsequently grew apart, connect again while calling the local police station. The narrator captures their act through a reference to their past familiarity and intimacy, which is consequently recreated in the present, with the image of "two heads pressed together over a handset" (p. 294). In this paper, I read this description as a sign of emotional, physical, and personal connection between the two women and take it as my guiding image. I argue that NW can be read as an attempt to relate E. M. Forster's famous dictum "only connect" from his novel Howards End (1910) with Paul Gilroy's ideas on "conviviality" as articulated primarily in After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (2004). 2 Reading together these two concepts-or perhaps intellectual ideals-suggests that creating and sustaining communities that emanate from interpersonal relations can resist the exclusionary and discriminatory practices of racism in contemporary, postcolonial Europe.

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Section: Smith Confronts Postcolonial Melancholia and Suggests A Path To Conviviality Throughmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Forster and Gilroy: Race and (Re)connection in Zadie Smith's NW

Amelsvoort¹

2018

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

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“…53 Moreover, since the 1960s, a policy geared to incentivise the filing of civil rights-related suits enabled victorious plaintiffs to recover fees, and 'the Supreme Court held that there should be a presumption in favour of such fee recoveries when plaintiffs win and against it when defendants win'. 54 A party prevailing against the United States may also receive attorney's fees and costs. 55 At the state level, there are also some statutory exceptions to the American rule regarding the shifting of fees and costs.…”

Section: Fee Shiftingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A View from the Sky

Gómez¹,

Gómez²

2015

Erasmus Law Review

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This article, which is based on the research conducted for the General Report 'Relief in Small and Simple Matters in an Age of Austerity' presented at the XV World Congress of Procedural Law, provides a contextualised and broad overview of these phenomena in the United States. After describing the general features of the federal and state judiciaries, including its adversarial model of judging, and the importance of the jury system, the article turns its attention to discuss the factors that affect the cost of litigation in the United States, the different models of litigation funding, the available legal aid mechanisms, and the procedural tools available for handling small and simple disputes. Furthermore, this article briefly revisits the discussion about the effect of austerity on the functioning of the United States legal system on the handling of small and simple matters and ends with a brief conclusion that summarises its contribution and sketches the points for future research on this important topic.

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Vernacular Cosmopolitanism, Cosmopolitan Culture, and Economics in Zadie Smith’s NW

Toprak Sakız

2023

Culture and Economics in Contemporary Cosmopolitan Fiction

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Post-Hysterics: Zadie Smith and the Fiction of Austerity

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

Between Forster and Gilroy: Race and (Re)connection in Zadie Smith's NW

Between Forster and Gilroy: Race and (Re)connection in Zadie Smith's NW

A View from the Sky

Vernacular Cosmopolitanism, Cosmopolitan Culture, and Economics in Zadie Smith’s NW

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